Organizing, annotating and networking knowledge - for professional growth and youth learning.

How do you curate the huge volume of information that comprises our daily lives, particularly as it relates to professional knowledge? And how do we help youth do the same for the purpose of personal and academic growth? Join this three-week conversation to share your experiences as we consider curation as an opportunity to gather and annotate as well as publish and share as part of a knowledge-building network.

Week 1: Introductions

Welcome to Curating Our Digital Lives!

Please introduce yourself to the group either through a textual response or by recording a video or audio and embedding in the discussion stream below. Please describe where you’re located, your teaching situation (if you're currently teaching) and your motivation for joining this discussion.

Diskutera uppgift

I'm excited to join this creative, reflective, and kind community! I would like to take from our discussions a better sense of the curating pedagogies, practices, and resources available to me and my students. I want us to spend next year discovering ourselves as makers and sharing our work with other learners (including other makers, other educators, and parents) inside and outside school. I'm also curious about streamlinging curation into kinds of digital daybooks, like - maybe - Evernote. Does that make sense?

I have used Evernote a few times in shallow ways, but I think you can essentially throw anything into it and annotate it. I'll mess with it more during this course and share out anything stellar that I find. I really like the idea of a day book and want something digital that is as flexible and easy to use.

I love, love, love Evernote. It's such a great way to collect, annotate, and organize a wide variety of content types from a wide variety of sources.

I primarily use Evernote just for myself, though I have a few folders that I share with some others.

Over in another P2PU course, we've been talking about the idea of having a large collection of stuff that then has "lenses" through which different views can be had by different audiences for different purposes. I am not quite sure if Evernote is the tool for that, but as a repository/collection place for resources that you want to access again later, it meets my needs very well.

I've been exploring Evernote since we last spoke - I think it's a great tool, but it can take over your life, and it's somewhat limited, so I've decided to just use it in one sphere of my life (i.e. academia).

Hi everyone! Thought I'd introduce myself by displaying a few of my online curated spaces that I hope will give you some sense of who I am.

I'm very much a learner when it comes to curation. In fact, I'm hoping we as a group can come up with an agreed-upon definition of online curation. (Sometimes I wonder if most everything we do online these days is curation - could it be easier to determine what isn't curation?) I'm also hoping I can figure out what it means to curate effectively - in ways that are helpful rather than burdensome. As well, I'm interested in curation as an act of creation and composing - and wondering if anyone is curious about that aspect of curation.

In any event, I know I'm going to learn a lot from this discussion and from you all! Looking forward to the ride together.

Just to add, I realize that the spaces I've shown might be described as archives. My niece, for instance, could be thought of as the curator in the case of the photo collection/scrapbook example. A question in fact posed by Terry, one of the organizers of this discussion, under the "What is Curation?" prompt for this week is: What is the difference between curating and archiving?

I think your introduction provides more opportunities for us to think through examples, non-examples and near-examples, another task in week 1. In Kevin's response to that task, he writes:

Your Twitter list, for example, is a great resource built around a common theme, but is it content? (In my mind, content is part of curation; That may differ for others.)

So, we can think through that together.

Your video also shows a range of strategies that you already employ and we can consider for our own use. You comment that you don't think you are curating effectively. I wonder why? Is this a natural reaction to "information overload" that we experience as readers in environments like Twitter, where we can never read it all?

I think you're exactly right, Joe - my introduction is great fodder for the examples, non-examples and near examples task. I'll jump into that conversation later today.

And, yes, my belief that I'm not curating effectively has to do with attempting to keep up with everything coming through the data hose that is my online life. I have strategies, but are they leading to productive use of content? I'm not sure.

I live with my better half in Hilversum, the Netherlands, just half an hour outside Amsterdam. Having grown up in various continents, I am aware of the neccessity of communication and that identity is a fluid concept.

Today, I'm a freelance English as a Foreign Language Teacher to adults and also work as a Communications intern for an NGO that supports environmental leaders in the developing world. I'll soon be starting an MSc. in International Development Studies despite a background in Psychology. The path I am walking is leading to the combination of my love of education with my hope and interest in development.

My interest in this course stems first and foremost that I feel very acutely that I am a product of this digital generation and that I am ill-equipped to deal with the tidal waves of information out there, especially related to my various interests.

Then I would echo what Joe Dillon said in his video; I want to be able to organize and "curate" (whatever that means - let's find out!) all the resources that are out there. One - so that I can have access to them, and two - to guide my students to them and their use. I find this especially important as in the Fall I will be teaching on a Teacher Training Program and feel I can bring a lot in terms of digital innovation.

I also think it's interesting that the conversation has already moved onto the "curation of digital identity", as well as Karen's comment about curating her different "spaces". Just looking at my diagram: I have the same issue.

Your cocentric circle diagram was interesting ... I wondered about overlapping spheres and how bes to represent that in such a model. I find it fascinating the various ways that all of us are turning to various technology tools to share our digital identities. Each one has different strengths and limitations.

I wonder what it says about us that we chose the tools we chose? (I guess that makes me a comic strip character .. and you, a colorful circle of circles.)

Like Kevin, I was fascinated by your diagram. It's a huge and creative task indeed to connect the circles of one's life! It's interesting to me that communication overlaps with the most circles, which makes sense. I wonder if you'd be willing to say more about the intersection between curation, communication and your other interests? How do they relate, in your mind?

Also, how did you create this diagram? It must have taken a great deal of planning.

@Kevin - I do think spheres would be much more realistic and interesting, especially as there is much more space to navigate that. In terms of method to achieve such a "diagram", the first thing that comes to mind for me is Google Sketch Up, the free 3D drawing software. However, I've never used it and a) I didn't feel write trying to learn a whole new program to "impress" and b) I was lazy.

I do wholeheartedly agree that it's interesting to see how people are presenting themselves, though there is a bit of pressure to make it interesting, which I think is great but perhaps a bit intimidating.

I'm going to take the colourful comment as a compliment :)

@Paul - Communication is an integral process to interrelationships, which is how I perceive the world. Our definition of identity is dependent on others, either directly (e.g. I am a girlfriend and teacher) or indirectly (e.g. I like to cook, therefore somebody had to be there to harvest/ship/sell the food to me and provide recipes). For me, I started the diagram with Communication and went from there. Coming from a background in psychology, I find communication very central because language = thought = humanity, and I learnt to think from somewhere, right?

For curation, that is more of a recent addition, much like your introduction, about the "harvesting" of all the knowledge that is out there. An avid reader, I gobble up information and now need to develop new ways of processing the digital age for it to be useful. (I've only recently come to ponder on curation, which is partly why this course is so interesting.) I see that as a learning process, both in the strategies I use and in their output => education.

So, I weed all the information which is thrown at me. Both for my personal interests and specifically in the work that I do. For the former, it can be explicitly, in my RSS reader, or implicitly, taking the bits and pieces of an article or what somebody says that I find useful and memorable. For the latter, I collect resources for my students and I write articles about international development.

Now, the extent to which that is curation is debatable, and naturally there's more to it that just these few lines, but that's for another task!

Otherwise, I thought of the concept of overlapping circles because htere is always a tiny portion which stands more alone than the rest, but the concept is pretty infinite, I think.

Then again, these are just my two cents.

As to the creation of the diagram, I really didn't plan that much :P I used Photoshop with various coloured vector masks to make circles and then put some type in the middle. I had a few vague ideas about what I wanted to include and have it in different colours, but I kind of made it up as I went along and then made a few minor adjustments so that it would all fit. I also originally thought of spheres, as did Kevin, but then I figured that was too hard so let's go with a funky Venn!

One thing that struck me a bit was the responsibility of a curator (pressure!) to find the right resources for the right people in the right moment (sort of like a teacher finding the right book for the right student at the right moment). I'm running into this as I set up two full-day seminars around Common Core for local teachers -- what do I share and what do I leave out? And it makes it more difficult when I don't know the audience yet.

Here is my response via my new best friend, Vialogues.com When I find a tool that enables something I have never done before and does it in a simple way, well...I tend to use it till I have mastered it. Here is more practice along that continuum of combining video annotation.

As someone did comment Kevin H has set the bar pretty high for creative introductions... so this is my effort... I made it on Readwritethink site which is really good for non creative types. Looking forward to sharing the experiences, ideas and perspectives from participants in many different walks of life in our conversations.

I'm excited about this course and especially the synchrous sessions we'll be having on Wednesdays at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern. We're going to try out Google Hangouts on Air for these. I've been playing with this tool this week and am really impressed! Hope to see you Wed. (We'll post the link on the Activity Wall here an hour or so beforehand. You'll get an email as well.)

I'm curious to hear more about the range of interests outside educational technology that you're curating online, Karen. I noticed that you mentioned farming at one point - perhaps at the participant wall. Is that one?

I thought I would try out an introduction that I am planning on using in a class I am currently developing. It is a riff of the Eight Noun Description that I learned of from Indiana professor Dr. Curt Bonk.

So I made a visual of my eight nouns with Wordle to compliment the introduction.

I am a Teacher of English in a suburban Boston high school, where I teach in face-to-face, blended, and online environments.

I have been a Seeker my whole life, which is what compelled me to become a Teacher later in life.

I am an Iconoclast, always questioning, and never satisfied with the notion, "This is the way we have always done it."

I am a Tinkerer, like my grandfather, dabbling here and there, messing about with various projects and my own wayfinding.

I am a Creator who has worked prefessionally in all kinds of articitc fields, with the major exception being music.

I am an Explorer of all kinds of intellectual interests, especially when it comes to teaching and learning. It is how I found the Boston Writing Project and so many great National Writing Project people.

I am a Provocatuer who likes to stir things up a bit now and again, which often gets me into trouble.

I am a Magpie who collects collections and can talk a blue streak, as my mother used to say.

Since we already have a mixed bag of introductions, I figured I would add another to the mix. I am also curious what anyone thinks of the idea.

I like this approach to introductions because your 8 nouns and the writing you've done about them describe you as a learner, a good bit of reflection for you and a an appropriate way for the group to meet you to begin learning together. Knowing you a little as a learner before we start is probably good online because we meet folks in discussion boards through writing and it might be good to know someone is a "provocatuer." (I certainly think dynamic courses need a few.) For students in face-to-face environments, I think this introduction will reveal diversity where a group might appear homogenous to the eye and it will also reveal similarities among students that will create bonds. Nice.

Well, of course, I could not resist the opportunity to add some thoughts. I hope others will join in, since I am curious to see what the vialogues site will look like with multiple (well, more than Terry and I) in a conversation.

Here is my reply to Kevin. I captured Kevin's cartoon on flickr using Jing. I converted it into jpeg and uploaded it into Dropbox. Then I imported the jpeg into my iPad app, Explain Everything. I annotated the cartoon witn text and voice (a form of curation) and exported it to YouTube. I copied the embed code to here and that is the story of how I responded to Kevin. I am working on my intro now realizing that Kevin has set the bar pretty dang high.

I am honored to be caught in a screencast (and so is my comic self). I couldn't let it stand there, though, so I pulled your video into Vialogues and added some reactions to your voice. Others can join in, too, if you want.